Abstract:

Because children eat better when their parents use appropriate feeding practices, this study examined WIC participation and parental knowledge about child feeding practices. A Child Feeding Questionnaire was developed to evaluate parental knowledge about these feeding practices. The questions evaluated parents' knowledge about their responsibilities and the responsibilities of their children in feeding situations, the role of parental modeling when eating, appropriate snack habits, management of dislikes/picky eating, and the use of coercive feeding practices. The directors of four WIC clinics, with clients of differing sociodemographic status, agreed to participate in the study. The questionnaire was tested with and revised following work with clients in two of the four WIC clinics. The questionnaire was then administered to 403 parents during WIC certification visits. Cronbach Alpha reliability measures indicated that the reliability of the instrument was low. Therefore, no real conclusions could be drawn from the results. However, the data analyses did suggest some possible findings that would need additional study to verify their existance. ANOVA measures indicated that increased length of WIC participation was not associated with an increase in the total number of correct responses. Parental responds suggested that the majority of respondents understood the responsibility of parents for deciding what foods to offer (88.3), and when to offer food (71.7 %), the importance of healthy snacks in the diet of children (79.4 %), the need to set a good parental example with eating (92.6 %), and the importance of exposing children to foods that the children dislike (80.1%). However, one-third of the parents did not agree or know that children should be resonsible for deciding how much to eat when foods are being offered. In addition, the majority of parents (68.7 %) indicated that it was acceptable to substitute a food for one that is disliked by children. With respect to the use of coercive feeding strategies to get children to eat, parental responses reflected that many parents (46.7 %) did not feel that the use of rewards to get children to eat was not advisable. Based on the researcher's professional knowledge that WIC staff generally provide only nutrition information related to immediate problems, it was recommended that WIC staff members who provide nutrition education might serve the participants better if the education that they provided was directed at broader nutrition issues that parents face in guiding their children to eat well. Perhaps this education will indirectly alleviate immediate nutritional needs of the individual child and prevent the occurance of other nutrition problems. This would require additional study for verification.